On the night of 16 December
1984, a wealthy Guguletu businessman named Victor Mangaliso, was
stabbed to death in his luxurious Malungo Park home by two paid
assassins, Sipo Peter (33) and Solomon Mbuzeli Shelini (43). At
the time of his death, Mangaliso's life was insured for almost R500
000, and in the event of him being permanently disabled or paralysed,
the value of his insurance policies increased to a staggering Rl,2
million. It would subsequently turn out that the two men who were
involved in the killing were paid between R500 and R800 for carrying
out the murder by Lindi Mangaliso, the victim's wife.

During the trial that followed,
the Investigating Officer, Captain Leonard Knipe, of the Peninsula
Murder and Robbery Squad, would remark, “Never in my experience
as a policeman has there been a case which has gripped the imagination
of the black community like this one.”

Lindi Nomso Mangaliso (nee Qunta)
was the eldest of five children. She come from a good home and had
grown up surrounded by love. Her mother, who as a member of the
Fingo tribe and related to the Dhlaminis, the Swazi royal family,
held a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Science. Her late father
was a graduate of Fort Hare University and held both Bachelor of
Arts and Bachelor of Education degrees. He had been the principal
of Langa High School, Cape Town, for more than twenty years and
was highly respected in the community.

After matriculating from Langa
High School, Lindi qualified as a nurse in Port Elizabeth. In 1972,
while still a student nurse, she married Victor Mangaliso, who at
the time worked in a bottle store. Initially, Mr and Mrs Qunta objected
to the match - Victor's prospects were poor; his father worked as
a cook in a hospital, and his mother was an unemployed domestic
worker - but in the end, Lindi talked them round. After her marriage,
she moved into a house with her in-laws in Guguletu.

After completing her training,
Lindi obtained a nursing post at Groote Schuur Hospital. While still
a nursing sister, she ventured into business for herself using her
own capital and some money her mother had given her. She first bought
a butchery in Langa, which was followed by a second one, and then
she finally acquired the franchise for a Kentucky Fried Chicken
outlet in Guguletu, Cape Town. Eventually, she decided to go into
business full-time.

Her husband by this time was
a representative for Nestle but he later began to work for his wife.
Lindi's mother maintained that Lindi was the one with the ideas
and business acumen and that Victor was merely a glorified bookkeeper.
“As the business prospered,” she said, “they bought
a home in the name of his mother because they wanted something more
prestigious. Later they bought their own home. They lived very well.”

Throughout the marriage, Mr
and Mrs Qunta remained concerned about their daughter, whose strong
personality aroused violent reactions in her husband. Victor took
a succession of girlfriends, drank heavily, and often became violent.
“Sometimes she would call me at 2 a.m. and ask me to fetch
her,” Mrs Qunta said. “I would ask my son to collect
her. On occasions she had a black eye, which she tried to hide with
sunglasses. At other times Lindi would phone and say that Victor
was assaulting her. I would ask my son to take me to her home. I
would talk to Victor. I felt it was useless because he was drunk.
When he was sober he was very nice and used to say, 'Yes, Mama".
It was very humiliating for Lindi and things did not improve over
the years.”

After putting up with her husband's
womanising, drinking and assaults for twelve years, Lindi felt 'angry'
and 'humiliated'. She had made a number of attempts to save the
marriage, all to no avail, and her life had finally become a misery.
In the latter half of 1984, she decided to murder her husband. To
this end, she turned for help to one of her employees, Washington
'Manyosi' Nxawe, who was working in one of her butcheries. Although
Nxawe had only been in Mrs Mangaliso's employ for about two months,
she confided in him. “She told me that she no longer loved
her husband as he was playing the fool with her,” Nxawe said.
“She asked me to get people to beat him up.”

At first Nxawe was skeptical,
but after Mrs Mangaliso had spoken to him three times, he realised
how serious she was. He also knew that she was prepared to pay 'plenty
of money' to have her husband done away with. Eventually, Nxawe
approached another man - Sipo Peter. One night, a month or so after
Mrs Mangaliso first approached him, Nxawe arranged a meeting between
Mrs Mangaliso, Peter and another man by the name of Mbuzeli Shelini.
At the meeting, Mrs Mangaliso told the two men that she wanted them
to attack her husband. That night, however, Victor returned home
very late, by which time the two men had gone. “My husband
is a very lucky man,” Mrs Mangaliso afterwards remarked.

A little while later, Mrs Mangaliso
asked Nxawe if Peter could be trusted. “I told Lindi that
Sipo could be trusted,” Nxawe said. “He was a brave
man and would not divulge secrets as he was not a talkative man.”

A few days before the murder,
the Mangaliso marriage faced another crisis. Lindi discovered that
her husband had yet another girlfriend - this time a schoolgirl
- and confronted him with the fact. Victor resented the way she
had treated the whole affair and after at first denying everything,
he eventually owned up and apologised. As far as Lindi was concerned,
however, this was the final straw. On 15 December, she phoned Nxawe.
“Sipo and his friend must do the job," she said. “Beat
him up, paralyse or kill him!”

The following night, at about
2 a.m., Victor was called out of the house to investigate a burglar
alarm, which had gone off for the second time that night in one
of the butcheries. It turned out to be a false alarm, but this only
seemed to worsen his mood. Angrily, he telephoned his wife. “He
said I had to get the hell out of the house when he got home,”
she said.

Mrs Mangaliso thought that she
was going to be beaten again when her husband got home. In a state
close to panic she telephoned Nxawe. “Victor has phoned me,”
she said. “Get those guys you said you would get.” Nxawe
promised to do so but didn't call back. Not long afterwards, Mrs
Mangaliso phoned him again, wanting to know where the men were.
Nxawe explained that he hadn't been able to get hold of them. 'Go
and find them he ordered. Shortly afterwards, Nxawe, Peter and Shelini
drove up to the house. Nxawe hooted twice and Mrs Mangaliso came
to the door and let Peter and Shelini into the house. Nxawe then
drove off. One of the men carried a knife and Mrs Mangaliso gave
one of her own knives to the other. She showed them the main bedroom,
the bathroom and where about R2 000 was hidden before taking them
to the children’s room, where they hid. Eventually, Victor
got back to the house. “I am not in the mood to beat you otherwise
I would have beaten the daylights out of you,” he said. He
made himself a snack and went to bed. After he had retired for the
night the two men crept into the bedroom. Lindi was lying awake
in the darkness, waiting for the two men to appear. “The bedroom
door opened after a while,” she said. “I ran out of
the room and was aware of two people entering the bedroom. I ran
to the bathroom. I heard my husband saying, 'What do you want?’”
“Where is the money?” one of the men replied.

Shortly afterwards, someone
locked the bathroom door from the outside. She heard the sounds
of a struggle and climbed through the bathroom window. After alerting
the servants, she ran to a neighbour's house. It was hours later
that she learnt her husband was dead.

At first the police suspected
that the murder had been the work of an ANC hit-squad. (A few months
earlier, attempts had been made to extort money from a number of
prominent black leaders and death threats had been issued. At the
time, Mrs Mangaliso had claimed that neither she nor her husband
were 'interested in township or national politics'.)

As the police investigation
continued, however, a number of anomalies revealed themselves. In
her first statement, Mrs Mangaliso claimed that she had been asleep
next to her husband when the intruders entered the bedroom, yet
there was no blood on her nightclothes, nor could she explain why
the robbers had attacked and so brutally murdered her husband, yet
left her untouched. Furthermore, the account she gave of the way
she escaped from the bathroom and raised the alarm did not stand
up to close examination.

Eventually, the police arrested
Nxawe, who was charged with conspiracy to commit murder. In exchange
for immunity from prosecution, Nxawe later turned State's evidence
and named his accomplices.

The trial of Lindi Mangaliso,
Sipo Peter and Mbuzeli Shelini, all of whom were charged with murder,
began at the Cape Town Supreme Court on 18 March 1986. Ail three
accused pleaded not guilty. After a lengthy trial, which was delayed
by a number of interruptions and the fact that two of the accused
changed counsel, Mangaliso, Sipo and Shelini were found guilty of
murder on 24 November 1986. In his four-hour summing-up of the marathon
trial, Mr Justice de Kock said that the total evidence showed that
Mangaliso 'planned and arranged the attack on Mr Mangaliso with
the assistance of Washington 'Manyosi" Nxawe and admitted the
assailants to the house intending them to attack and kill her husband,'
and, 'at least stood by' while her husband was attacked. The court
also rejected the claim by Shelini that he was an innocent party
in the affair in that he remained standing in the passage while
Peter stabbed Mr Mangoliso. Referring to a letter (see end) allegedly
written in Pollsmoor prison by Shelini, where he was remanded during
the trial, Mr Justice de Kock said that it was clear from the contents
that he admitted he took part in the crime 'and that he fears the
consequences that will follow'. The court also rejected Peter's
evidence that he was ill in bed on the night of the killing. The
court accepted as admissible evidence - despite the fact that he
would later claim the statement was made under duress - Peter's
earlier statement in which he admitted that he and Shelini were
taken to the Mangaliso's house where they fought with and killed
Mr Mangaliso.

Sentence was finally passed
on 12 December 1986. Peter and Shelini were condemned to hang because
they had 'deliberately and willingly taken part in this heinous
crime for financial gain'. Mrs Mangaliso was sentenced to 20 years
in prison. Her husband's abuse, betrayal and humiliation' were seen
as extenuating circumstances. On occasion, Mrs Winnie Mandela, who
was a bosom friend of Lindi Mangaliso, attended the trial. As she
was leaving the court on 4 December, she was pelted with softdrink
cans, orange peel and sand by a large, angry crowd. “Winnie
Mandela is the wife of our leader,” one protester maintained.
“She should not be supporting Lindi Mangaliso!” Mrs
Mandela later blamed 'the system' for stage-managing the demonstration
against her.

Following the trial, the Mangaliso's
three children went to live with their maternal grandmother, Mrs
Grace Qunta. Timo Bezuidenhoud, who had been chief administrator
of Cape Town's black townships for many years and was a friend of
Mrs Mangaliso, was appointed curator responsible for the children's
portion of their father's estate. Lindi Mangaliso is incarcerated
in Polismoor prison.

On 4 March, 1989, Shelini and
Peter were reprieved and had their death sentences commuted to 20
years imprisonment by the Acting State President, Mr Chris Heunis.

In August 1985, an anonymous
letter addressed to 'Lean' was found in the cell Shelini was being
held in along with some other men. The letter said:

'If you can get me out
of this place I really don't know what I will do for you. Please
Dear try all you can. Those people must die before the 13th. and
I will pay. Also the court books must be missing. If your brother
can kill these people I will be a free man. Even my cell-mate
with this woman they are throwing everything at me. Here are the
names of these people: Nxawe, Julius Tshaka , Leonard Knipe (he
is a white man).'

A handwriting expert identified
Mbuzeli Shelini as the author of the letter. (Julius Tshaka was
reputedly in the house when the murder took place. Shelini implicated
him in the crime but Tshaka was not charged.)